"Fine." I closed the door behind me, dropping my keys on the hook by the entrance. The hook that was now perfectly aligned with the others, whereas before they'd been a jumbled mess of random placement. "What's for dinner?"
The table was set.
Not just set, arranged. Two plates positioned opposite each other, centered on placemats I definitely didn't own, probably from the same hardware store that sold plants. Utensils aligned at right angles. Glasses filled with water, ice cubes floating in perfect symmetry.
And napkins. Folded into little triangles beside each plate.
I stood there, staring at the napkins as if they were going to attack me.
"You folded the napkins?"
"Is that wrong?" Tobias emerged from the kitchen carrying a pot of pasta. He'd made the sauce from scratch, judging by the splatter patterns on the stovetop that he had somehow cleaned up since I'd last glanced that way. "I wasn't sure about the fold. There are at least six acceptable variations, but I went with the basic triangle because I didn't have proper linen to work with. Paper requires different techniques."
"There are six variations of napkin folding?"
"At least." He set the pot on a trivet that was also new. "The fan fold, the bishop's hat, the candle, the rose, the envelope pocket, and the basic triangle. For formal occasions, you'd typically use the rose or the bishop's hat, but those require cloth napkins with a certain weight and stiffness."
"I don't think I've ever folded a napkin in my life."
"I can show you. It's not complicated." He began serving the pasta, movements precise and practiced despite the fact that I knew he'd never served his own food before last week. "The triangle is the most versatile. Works for any occasion."
"Why would I need to know how to fold a napkin?"
He opened his mouth, closed it, and looked genuinely puzzled, as if he had never considered a world where napkin-folding wasn't a necessary skill. The idea of living without proper table settings seemed foreign to him.
"Never mind." He served the pasta. "I made carbonara. Or tried to. The sauce broke twice before I got it right."
"Sauce can break?"
"Eggs. Heat. It's a whole thing." He sat across from me, arranging his own napkin on his lap with unconscious precision, smoothing out invisible wrinkles. "You have to temper the eggs before adding them to the pasta; otherwise, they scramble. I watched three tutorials. The first two disagreed about whether to use whole eggs or just yolks. The third suggested a compromise that didn't work at all."
"How do you know when it's right?"
"When it coats the pasta without looking scrambled." He picked up his fork, then paused. "Also when the bacon is crispy but not burnt, and the cheese is melted but not clumped. There are a lot of variables."
I took a bite.
The pasta was better than anything I'd made in the past year. Maybe the past five years. Rich and creamy, the bacon crispy, the cheese somehow silky instead of stringy. Exactly the right temperature, exactly the right consistency.
"It's good."
"Really?"
"I'm eating it, aren't I?"
He ducked his head, but I caught the edge of his smile before he hid it. That smile did something complicated to my chest, something I didn't want to think about too hard.
We ate in silence for a while. Not awkward, just quiet. The kind of quiet that happens when two people run out of small talk and don't mind. The kind of quiet I'd never experienced with anyone else in this apartment.
"You didn't have to do all this," I finally said. "The cleaning. The plant. The placemats. Any of it."
"I know."
"So why did you?"
He set down his fork, considering the question more seriously than it warranted. His pale green eyes went distant, as if he were looking at something I couldn't see.
"Because I could." His voice was careful, like he was figuring out the words as he spoke. "At home, everything was done for me. I never chose the food, never decided how the table was set, never even picked what kind of soap was in my bathroom. There werestaff for that. People whose entire job was to make sure I never had to think about mundane things."
